Posts by The Indomitable Gall

Pirate island attracts more than 100 startup tenants

Re: tax

What's the current situation with the liner "The World"? It seems like we've already got an example of a mobile offshore tax haven, and one that is quite open about it. Why would anyone need to be clandestine?

Re: Tidal waves

Tidal waves (tsunamis) aren't much bother in international waters, usually. They only gain height when they enter inshore waters and the leading edge of the surge slows, causing the rushing water to pile up.

Whether the shelf outside the SF bay is shallow enough to be a tsunami risk, I don't know. However, while much of the shelf is in international waters, it's mostly still within the US contiguous zone, so the US would have some legal grounds to challenge them if residents do anything that isn't legal in the US, or if they consider it a tax-dodge...

Pilots asking not to fly F-22 after oxygen problems

Re: A negative article about the F-22?!

Lewis is currently receiving oxygen from the paramedics.... ;-)

Re: 'The Right Stuff'

True enough.

Look at automatic belay devices for climbers. Statistically safer than a human buddy, but there's something about the randomness of failure that really makes them frightening. Yeah, my buddy's more likely to drop me, but at least there's some notion of "control" in human error.

Re: No one gone for the obvious Top Gun song reference?

Erm... isn't that what the subhead is all about...?

Moon at annual perigee this weekend

Statistics...

"the NASA video below says that tides will rise only a few centimetres and that there's no link between increases in crime and close moon approaches."

That's because NASA are ignoring the effect of tidal forces on statistics. Our base reference is pulled out of whack by the moon's gravity. If you think about it, all our mountains shrink at high tide, right? We measure our mountains by height *above sea level*, after all.

Now if tides do the same thing to our base reference of crime statistics, then a "no change" is actually an increase proportionally equal to the tidal distance, thus explaining the disparity between NASAs view and popular perception.

Biennial boner blights Beemer biker

German vehicles....

What does the Sociedad Española de Automóviles de Turismo have to do with German cars...?

Long-known

“It’s been long-known that compression of the neurovascular supply to the penis - if it’s compressed for a period of time, whether it be on a bicycle seat or some other device - it can actually cause prolonged numbness of the genitalia.”

Yup, and every lifestyle cyclist is well aware of this and will look for a saddle that has a gap designed to prevent pressure on the perineum for this very reason. Anyone who makes a saddle these days and doesn't take it into account really is pretty negligent....

Want to be a better marksman? Play shooting games

Re: The object to your left is your weapon in the upcoming zombie apocalypse

The object to my left is a long-distance touring road bicycle. I'm alright with that....

Intel bakes palm-sized Core i5 NUC to rival Raspberry Pi

Re: Shut down on fan fail.

Exactly. Ergo if the fan doesn't work, your whole system's down. Which is a nuisance when what you're looking for is a relatively low-spec item with relatively high uptime. A lower spec processor with no fan will be a better candidate for interactive displays, PoS systems etc.

UK Ministry of Defence eyes GPS patent payoff

Mistake...

"“a method for generating a subcarrier modulation signal for modulating a further signal, the method involving multiplexing or selectively combining portions for first and second subcarriers to produce the subcarrier modulation signal"

My GPS receiver doesn't generate these subcarrier modulation signals, does it? That would be the satellites' job. They maybe should have worded the patent method slightly differently....

iPhone 5 in ICE CREAM SANDWICH photo riddle

Re: Trademark and non-4G

Trademarks are industry specific, but in most jurisdictions you can still be done for "passing off" if you seem to be attempting to trade off the reputation of a synonymous entity. If I recall correctly, in the US, that was established by law, but in the UK I think it was established by precedent. Either way, the use of a mobile phone in the advert certainly would qualify as sufficiently confusing to be a case of passing off.

Crytek: Schemes to strike second-hand games biz 'awesome'

Re: I got some second hand food he can have

@AC

"OK jai, practically every other industry on the planet since time began has managed to factor in reclaiming cost of R&D into the single initial sale, so why does the software industry have to be any different?"

I assure you that the profit on a car is far more than the profit on your latest game. And yet the cost of developing a new game is increasing every year, and the cost of developing a new car is dropping every year.

@Mad Mike

So, run games as advertising campaigns for the next game. Each game is an advert... where's the product? I mean, your advertising has to actually *sell* something, doesn't it?

Ofcom: The Office of Screwing Over Murdoch?

Re: Orlowski gets it wrong

I never heard about the emails -- I only heard about the voicemails. The email claims could not possibly have caused me to be any more revulsed than I already was. I doubt many people would say any different. They couldn't have gotten any lower unless they'd started beating people up to get stories!

Compulsory coding in schools: The new Nerd Tourism

Andrew Orlowski needs to spend a week in an office.

In any corporate environment, you can find dozens of people "programming" at any one time. Whether it's a bodged-together spreadsheet or a VBA macro in Word, it's still programming. It's just very *bad* programming... because the people doing it aren't trained in programming.

Programming is the art of automating information manipulation. Lots of time is lost in all desk jobs to people doing manually what they could easily automate with a simple shell script.

Programming *is* a core skill for the modern world.

Of course, it is correct to say that the people in charge of primary syllabus design don't really understand what programming *is*, and would most likely fall into the old web-design trap instead of teaching structured thought, but that's a different issue.

@Will Godfrey

"This is where I would like to see programming fit in, not as a must-do separate entity, which will be slow enough to frustrate those with natural talent and esoteric enough to bore the rest out of their skulls."

Yesyesyesyesyes.

My first taste of programming in school was a bit of Logo. It was integrated with the "angles" part of the primary maths syllables: right-angles, squares, triangles, circles. But while a Logo-led syllabus would have required the teaching of internal angles in convex n-sided polygons, and of mathematical functions( f(n) = (n-2) /180 ), that wasn't on the primary syllabus, so we didn't have the fundamental grounding to do anything useful with the turtle graphics anyway. In the end, I never learnt about internal angles on arbitrary polygons until university.

Computer programming CANNOT be an isolated, modularised, standalone subject. It must be linked to the rest of the syllabus, thus showing that there's a reason for it and actually helping illustrate topics being taught.

Oracle v Google could clear way for copyright on languages, APIs

Re: "Intellectual property exists to encourage innovation"

There are people who are genuinely afraid to talk about their ideas for fear of having them nicked.

I'm currently working on some language learning software, but I can't release any early public betas because there is no copyright protection on my ideas, and if someone with more time and money than me decided to reimplement my ideas, they would end up with a killer app and a first-to-market advantage. If software was patentable here (the UK) I'd have a prototype in the patent office this summer and a public beta started. It would then be easier for me to get critical mass to push to v1.0 and start earning the cash to support full-time development (and the hiring of a GUI designer -- not my strong point).

That said, I'm against software patents on an ideological level, but to argue flat that IP protection does not encourage innovation is incorrect. It encourages ground-up innovation (such as it would in the case of my software) but in some ways it does discourage *incremental* innovation (eg if someone wanted to add an improved learning task to my software, they wouldn't be allowed to in a patented world).

There's a balance to be struck. Neither "free-for-all" or "screwed down tight" offers the required protection or flexibility.

Instagram

Talking of pixlr-o-matic...

I installed pixlr-o-matic on my new cheapo Android handset. My biggest beef with it was that the added defects (sparkles, lines, fuzz etc) were all fixed overlays rather than procedurally-generated interference patterns -- or in plain speak, they're the same every time, limiting their usefulness if you take a lot of snaps. What I'm looking for is a simple program that doesn't give me the same result picture after picture. What is available out there?

Ten... Bedroom Gadget Treats

Re: I'm dubious

"what use is an alarm clock that wakes you up 20 minutes before or after the time you set it for?"

Incomplete sleep cycles make you no less tired than no sleep at all in the long-term, and in the short term it makes for a very nasty start to the day.

By waking you up only when you're ready, you get a much calmer rousing, and you're much better off for it.

Death Star dinosaur aliens could rule galaxy

Re: homochirality

As they're also likely to be creationists, their response might be particularly interesting, when it come to dinosaur extinction....

Re: And then...

"After 65 million years even the slow tectonic plates are going to have moved a couple of thousand kilometres, and the quick ones double that. That means most of the evidence of an industrial civilisation is going to have been subducted back under the crust."

Aha, the same process by which all evidence of the existence of dinosaurs was destroyed, meaning that we now have no physical evidence they ever existed. No fossilised bones, no fossilised footprints, no tar-pit or amber specimens. In fact, with so little evidence, we never even postulated their existence or invented the word dinosaur!

Actually, no.

The real danger is that the dino-DNA depositing debris reaches an inhabited planet before the terrestrial broadcast of Jurassic Park is successfully decoded and some foolish scientists attempt to clone the DNA. Of course, the back-to-front amino acids that the scientists will no doubt be composed of is likely to give T Rex a bad case of heartburn, but that'll only serve to make him even crankier....

Publishing giants sue open textbook startup over layout

You're missing the point.

The idea is that a university lecturer will give you a bunch of section references to read and revise between classes that are specific to a textbook. By using the same references as a commercial textbook, you get the opportunity to nick their audience, and you're doing it off the back of their work.

Interesting UK law.

OK, so it's not directly applicable to this case (as it's not US law) but here in the UK we have a law that directly encodes a principle that deals with this sort of thing. I think it's called "Typographical arrangements".

"1. In a typical publication, copyright subsists both in the content of a work and also in the typographical arrangement and design elements of the work. Typographical arrangement covers the style, composition, layout and general appearance of a page of a published work." [Her Mayesty's Stationery Office]

This notion of "arrangement" even extends to the selection and numbering of songs or poems in a collection, and the selection of specific verses within those poems or songs. If I spend a lot of time collecting, editing and typesetting a bunch of 18th centre verses, then the law protects me from someone walking up, copying the (public domain) contents and undercutting me -- this is only right.

I'm not a fan of the exploitative nature of the textbook market, but the principles behind this suit are sound.

Real-time movie FX editing on the Flash PCIe cards

Re: Dumb Question: Why not more RAM ?

"So why not just put a shed load of normal DRAM memory into the machine, and let the O/S filesystem caching kick in ?"

Because having your cache reads and writes on the same memory bus doubles the traffic, effectively halving the data throughput.

As PCIe is on the memory bus anyway, you write once to PCIe. You presumably read it off the card without involving the system bus at all.

That should, in theory, prevent the system bus becoming a bottleneck....

Bacteria isolated for four million years beat newest antibiotic

Re: Now, that's strange

"There are some people who just feel that if something can not be demonstrated in a lab, through the Scientific Method, it is not science."

Am I to take it that you think astrophysics is not a science, then? I've certainly never seen a lab big enough to house a galaxy....

Too small to fail: Obama signs Nontrepreneurs Act

Re: Wait a minute

"I thought one of the lefty mantras was that business was no good and deserved no breaks and needed to be watched like a cat watching a mouse."

It is.

What's your point.

Oh wait, you think that Obama's a leftie... Good God, the West Coast may be blue, but that doesn't make the Democrats left-wing!

Matt Groening reveals location of Simpsons' Springfield

Best thing on BBC3...?

"As for Family Guy, there's a show which should have been off the air a long time ago. And it's _still_ the best thing on BBC3."

That's only because Mongrels isn't currently broadcasting....

Five charged after fanboi sells kidney for iPad and iPhone

Re: I WOULDNT SELL A KIDNEY FOR AN IPAD

You forget that most American cars have an automatic gearbox, so you only need one foot anyway.

'Don't break the internet': How an idiot's slogan stole your privacy...

Enforce the laws?

@Graham Dawson:

"Enforce the laws that exist rather than creating new ones. Of course that leaves copyright as a mostly civil matter in the UK, which is apparently an undesirable outcome for some people."

Erm.... I think that's what ACAP was trying to do -- produce a protocol that allows the existing laws to be enforced.

Feathered Tyrannosaurus uncovered in China

Re: Yutyrannus, me Jane.

Q: Yutyrannus huali?

A: Ali man who box in 60s.

Yes, Prime Minister to return after 24 years

Re: Leads

Surely he'll get at least a walk-on as a member of the House of Lords, though...

Lucy in 3.4 million-year-old cross-species cave tryst

Re: Not long ago all scientists were creationists

@No, I will not fix your computer

I think he's referring to the cult-like behaviour of Dawkins and his mindless fans. Dawkins love of evolution led to his espousal of the daft notion of "memes", and I'm not talking about Downfall subs.

Dawkins does want to see evolution as the sole guiding principle of all science, and he's a stuck-up, self-important pseud.

But again, I ask the OP not to portray all atheists as fanatics, just as we don't judge all Christians by the standards of Irish bishops or Westboro Baptist....

Re: Not long ago all scientists were creationists

The fact that a vocal minority of non-religious people are childish thickos who mistake name-calling for intelligent debate is lamentable, but don't fall into the trap of generalising this to the whole bunch of us. I am a complete agnostic, and will never ever be an atheist, because it's an intellectually unsupportable standpoint.

However, you'd have to be blinder than Saul to miss the irony in your post. You espouse religion. Why? Presumably because you were told it was true -- there isn't much more than that to go on with religion. Now that in and of itself is not a bad thing -- I believe in your right to have a faith and to profess that faith, and I would defend that right for you -- it's just that you reject evolution by the very same mechanism that you accept faith.

And what maths am I to check? You haven't provided any figures. The long-term movement of the moon is a very hard thing to model indeed -- celestial motion falls into the realm of complex systems; AKA "Chaos theory". It's such a difficult mathematical problem that it's currently technically unsolvable -- there is still too much to learn about gravitational interactions.

Moreover, how is the motion of the moon an example of the flaws in the theory of evolution? As long as the moon existed before the evolution of the modern moth, it's largely irrelevant when or how it got there....

Re: I'll bet we'll find plenty of other species too.

"being thick as two short planks is genetic"

Genes are only one factor in intelligence. But by far the biggest factor is education. Children in an environment with low mental stimulation are less well educated when they start school and never catch up.

(On the other hand, I've known many people in degree-educated jobs who do seem quite thick despite all that education...)

UK government says no to turbo e-bike

Re: - Govt can't keep the pace?

That small minority tends to ride sub-£500 bikes. Anyone who goes past the grand mark tends to be a bit more sensible.

PlayStation 4 'Orbis' pegged for 2013 release

Paradox....

Most tools to allow people to develop games quicker are tools that tend to push them towards a particular style in a particular format with particular mechanics.

In other words, they're tools to develop FPSes ang RPGs.

Angry Birds Space

Sorry, no.

The "fluke" tag is entirely justified. There's plenty of times I've looked like I've been on for a one-shot win, but one plank has fallen awkwardly and blocked everything, making the level uncompletable. That difference between a perfect win and a complete fail is too tiny to be under my control -- AB is largely luck.

Man FLIES with Android-powered homemade bird wings

Re: This doesnt hold water (or air for that matter)

Definitely -- it has the look of a Harryhausen about it...

Sadly it's easier to convince someone something is real by making it look like a film than by making it look, you know, real.

Geeks seek cubits for Battlestar flight sim

Re: You guys are way too cynical

Perhaps so, but the first lesson they need to learn is where to start, and they started at the wrong place. They built a huge whopping rig before having a working prototype -- they said that they've still to develop the Arduino code, but they should have got that up and running with a Lego or plywood prototype before getting the welding equipment out. I can't see how they're going to manage to retrofit the actuators into the bearings -- they might have to dismantle it and start again.

Braben sticks knife into secondhand games market

Car dealerships

Car dealerships pay a LOT of money to be an official Vauxhall/Ford/BMW whatever dealer and service centre. Warranty terms often specify that all servicing must be carried out by an official dealer, and that repairs must use official spare parts. That keeps the customer's business with the manufacturer for several years. Even afterwards, there's still a lot of money in aftermarket parts that are increasingly specialised and difficult to reproduce.

Furthermore, a car costs thousands of pounds and R&D is a relatively small component of that -- manufacturing costs are high.

Manufacturing costs for digitial media and cardboard packaging are negligible, but the time spent developing a commercial game is absolutely huge.

High Court confirms 'cheap DVD' tax loophole will close

Copyright mafia

"I’m also sure that the copyright mafiaa did some lobbying on this to ensure the plebs pay more for their music."

Erm... why? The content producers have nothing to gain from this. Low taxation keeps pre-tax sales prices high, so I would imagine it means the label's share of the sale stays up. Slightly lower prices also lead to slightly higher sales, so they win again.

You don't like record labels -- fine. But don't blame them for every evil in the world.

Mobile gaming: battle of the gadgets

I'm not a hardcore gamer, but...

I'm not a hardcore gamer (I got out of gaming after suffering work-related RSI) but as someone who was on the road frequently with work a few years ago, I can see the benefit in being able to walk into a hotel, kick off my shoes, jump on the bed and start playing my games. The work laptop always had one or two games on it (up until the drive encryption and app lockdown -- grrr!!!) but that also meant carrying DVD ROMs everywhere.

At the time, a device like the Xperia Play with wireless TV connection would have been a godsend.

Pollster charts rise and rise of the e-book reader

Stats.

If they keep increasing at that rate, there'll be two people reading ebooks for every one person on the planet within a decade!!!

Top Brit authors turn flamethrowers on barmy IPO

Re: Abso-bloody-lutely

They don't do this now because that would be against "the market". It would be "big government", which is Satan's own political system eh wot, doncha know.

Funnily enough, there is one area where educational materials *are* centrally funded: Gaelic-medium education in Scotland. The Mail, the Tax-Payers' Alliance et al will immediately jump up and down about the thousands being spent on a-language-that-isn't-God's-own-English, and completely fail to do the sums... under which they'd find that centrally commissioned material is actually head-for-head cheaper than stuff subject to market forces.

You can explain this to an economist in two words: "reduced risk", yet somehow the idea that reducing competition reduces efficiency (which is generally true, but not applicable here) leaves them incapable of accepting this simplest of simple law of economics.

Re: Ooookaayyyy

@Irish donkey

"is it reasonable that eBooks cost the Public Sector more than the current paper based versions?"

Until the reuse license issue is sorted, vs wear and tear of physical books, the relative value of paper vs ebooks is still debatable.

SimCity to return after 10-year holiday

Modding?

You've missed the "online" bit. The real money is in subscriptions, not sales, so this is likely to be heavily tied to EA's own servers, and modding will be banned.

Restaurant takes the piss, recycles it as fertiliser

It's the nitrogen stoopid.

There isn't much of value in urine, but it does provide nitrogen in a soil-friendly form. At normal concentration, urine can singe and burn plants, but water it down, and it becomes a good source of nourishment. My big brother used to wee in the garden after a night on the juice, and we got nice thick green patches out of it, because it was adequately diluted when it came out.

Facebook blamed for getting Thai teens up the duff

Re: Old fashioned solutions to old fashioned problems.

3 thumbs down? I assume you didn't realise this was a joke. As in "not serious". Jeeeez.....